Balboa Naval Hospital San Diego Patch

The first Navy hospital buildings in Balboa Park were nicknamed the Pink Palace for their pink color, and that name is stitched right across the bottom of this patch. The Navy established its first permanent medical facility in San Diego at Balboa Park on May 20, 1917. In July 1919 Congress authorized the Navy to accept land at Inspiration Point, and the new hospital there was built on August 22, 1922. It grew into what is now Naval Medical Center San Diego. Most Navy people still just call it Balboa.

During World War II the Balboa complex treated about 172,000 patients, and occupancy peaked at 12,000 in December 1944. In the Vietnam era it was described as the largest military hospital in the world, and its staff cared for prisoners of war returning from Vietnam. A new complex in Florida Canyon was dedicated on January 23, 1988. On May 8, 2008 the hospital was named Bob Wilson Naval Hospital, and the entrance road is Bob Wilson Drive. The original Pink Palace building still stands and now houses the San Diego County Parks and Recreation Department.

The patch is a 4-inch circle with an orange merrowed edge and a white outer ring. BALBOA NAVAL HOSPITAL arcs across the top in red, and "THE PINK PALACE" runs along the bottom in quotation marks. Inside, a map shows California in green and Nevada in pale peach, each named in white, with the Pacific in light blue. SAN DIEGO is stitched in red beside a red star at the southern end of the coast, SFO is marked in black up the coast, and a navy blue disc carries an orange caduceus and anchor. The backing is iron-on, and it can also be sewn on.

For Navy corpsmen, nurses and doctors stationed in San Diego, Balboa was the big hospital that the fleet and the Marine bases leaned on. Sailors were patched up there between deployments, families had children there, and wounded men from World War II through Vietnam recovered on its wards. The nickname stuck to the old buildings long after the hospital moved down into Florida Canyon. Anyone who trained or worked there tends to say Balboa the way other people say home port. The patch keeps the old name alive.

It fits a shadow box with a corpsman's or nurse's ribbons and a photo from the wards. It also works on a jacket or a reunion vest, or as a gift for a parent who served or was born at Balboa. A small piece of San Diego Navy history.